Language planning

In order to express a message properly, you require a certain amount of time. You will, for example, need to determine what you are going to say. Or how to build up your story and what your sentence structure looks like. In other words, language planning is an important part in communication. This is especially true in case of fluency disorders in general, and more specific in cluttering.

There is evidence that language planning disturbances are a causal factor of disfluencies and misarticulating in cluttering. For example, the number of normal disfluencies indicates the extent to which the speech rate relates to language planning skills. The language production difficulties manifest itself when language development is in an advanced state and a person has a strong inner urge to speak. Therefore, cluttering can be diagnosed in persons of  ten years and older. Starting from that age the language development is complete. Difficulty in expressing relatively complex messages definitely play a role in the severity of cluttering. This is not the case for every single cluttering speaker, but for the vast majority is sure is.

A head full of thoughts

 Cluttering speakers are often struggling to determine what to say and how to do it, because the planning of language is not yet complete. It will therefore not come as a surprise that they often feel like their head is about to explode when talking. Cluttering speakers may find it difficult to choose from the multitude of thoughts spinning around in their heads. If they do not take enough time for this, they will soon experience all kinds of glitches in their speech. For stuttering speakers this is exactly the other way round: they struggle to express what has already been planned in their minds. See this video (down the page) to learn more.

There is little you can do about the cause of impaired language planning skills. But you can learn to deal with it in a smarter way. Read more about it in our book Too Fast for Words. We also coach people who clutter.